


Mind and Body

by thegalrahobbitofplantetgalilfrey



Series: Born for Pain [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Keith's out, Team Bonding, sorry - Freeform, with lotor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 06:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegalrahobbitofplantetgalilfrey/pseuds/thegalrahobbitofplantetgalilfrey
Summary: Keith is unconscious, and most of the team doesn't know that he's paralyzed; They all notice that something is up with Lotor, though, and they'll all try to fix it.





	Mind and Body

Pidge yawned as she tightened one last screw in a mechanical finger. There. She had the basics of a robot’s finger down, but she’d have to connect it to Keith’s nerves, which was going to be difficult. She wasn’t even entirely sure that she could fit it on the remainder of his hand! How was she supposed to attach it?!

She pushed herself up from the floor of her room and padded quietly down the hall to the med bay. She sat down next to Keith’s bed, examining his mutilated hand. Of course, he’d also been stabbed right through his hand, so she would have to know how bad the nerve damage was there before she could connect any nerves. She pulled up the glowing scan of his body, but it was locked. Pidge frowned. Why was it locked? Allura had never locked away injury scans before!

She glanced at Keith again. Sleeping, as usual, with a mask that gave him both oxygen and medication strapped over his face. Allura hadn’t taken him off of sedatives because she wanted him to heal as much as possible before submitting him to the pain of being awake. But what if… Pidge shook away her frantic thoughts. No. She couldn’t be a conspiracy theorist right now. But the thought pressed at her mind, again and again. Keith had died. His heart had stopped, she’d heard the flatline herself.

Allura had used the defibrillator, of course, but what if she’d done something else? Pidge knew how Zarkon and Haggar had been brought back to life with quintessence. What if Allura had accidentally done the same thing? What if the Keith that was sitting in front of her right now wasn’t really Keith, but a mind-controlled zombie? And that was the true reason that Allura was keeping him sedated?

Pidge reached out with trembling fingers and gently felt Keith’s wrist. A faint but steady pulse reached her through the bandages, and she released a sigh of relief. He was alive. That was good. Of course, maybe mind-controlled quintessence zombies had pulses, but she somehow felt like they didn’t.

A noise caught her attention and she rolled behind Keith’s bed, peering over the edge to see a pair of glowing eyes in the doorway. Her blood chilled. Haggar had come for Keith!

Pidge leapt over the bed with a savage cry, shooting her bayard and pumping electricity into it as she activated the lights. On the other end of her bayard’s line, she saw Lotor, twitching as electricity zapped through him.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, “I tased the Emperor!” She patted his face gently. “Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead!”

Lotor opened his eyes, his eyelids twitching slightly. “Ow. You have- excellent aim, paladin.”

“I’m sorry! I saw the glowing eyes, and-”

“You acted naturally,” Lotor said smoothly, “It’s quite alright.”

“I tased the emperor,” she whispered again.

Lotor’s lips twitched into a smile, or maybe he was still suffering from the side effects of the electricity. “I’m surprised that the war lasted as long as it did if you can take down the Galra emperor so easily.”

Pidge grinned, brandishing her bayard. “Just get Haggar to wander in the med bay, and we’re set!” She immediately remembered who she was dealing with and backed off. “Uh- so- why are you in here?”

“It is not important- I required a bandage.” His lips twitched into that smile again. “I was not expecting a vicious attack.”

Pidge flushed. “Where did you get hurt?” she asked in an attempt to push off her embarrassment, “Did it happen in the rescue?”

He shook his head. “I simply forgot my own strength. I shall be fine.”

Pidge tapped the display again, but it flashed the locked symbol at her again. She frowned, peering at the passcode entry. All of the letters were in Altean! It would take _hours_ to get all of the possible combinations, even with her computer programs.

“Perhaps I could try?”

Pidge scooted over, and Lotor tapped the screen. It flashed that he’d gotten the password correct, and the scan of Keith’s injuries appeared.

“How did you do that?!”

Lotor smiled with a slight shake of his head. “The password was simply Altean for password. Allura may have many strengths, but it appears that creating passwords is not one of them.”

Pidge chuckled and started reading through the various injuries. She winced at the damage caused, and sent it all to her laptop, just in case. She kept reading, though, and one word escaped her lips.

“Paralyzed?”

“What?” Lotor hovered over her shoulder, peering over her to look at the scan. “Paralyzed from the waist down? That means… no more Voltron?”

Pidge stared numbly at the words, as if staring at them in disbelief would make them untrue. Keith… paralyzed? Keith, unable to walk? Unable to run? Unable to fly? The words didn’t make sense when she put them together. Keith _couldn’t_ be paralyzed, simply because he was _Keith_ ; paralysis wasn’t an option in his future.

But the words were there, floating in front of her on the screen, a calm condemnation of everything Pidge had ever hoped for, flashing in blue letters. Keith was paralyzed. He might recover some ability to move his legs, but he’d be in a wheelchair more likely than not.

She realized that a tear had run down her face, and she wiped it away, trying for a watery smile. “Stupid,” she told Keith, pushing her glasses up her face with a sniffle, “Why didn’t you just tell them?” She already knew the answer. Because he was Keith, and Keith never gave up, not unless he absolutely had to. Keith, who would always look at the greater good, who’d been willing to sacrifice even his life if it would save the universe.

“He knew what he wanted,” Lotor said quietly, “And he knew what he was doing.”

“Knew what he was doing?” Pidge whirled on Lotor in disbelief, gesturing to Keith. “Does it _look_ like he ‘knew what he was doing?!’ Does it?! Look at him!”

“Yes,” Lotor replied firmly, “Someone who didn’t know what they were doing wouldn’t look like this. Someone who didn’t know what they were doing would’ve caved to the druids. He knew _exactly_ what he was getting into. He knew that it was for the greater good.”

Pidge glared at the emperor. She wasn’t anywhere close to his height, but his eyes flashed with what might have been at least apprehension if not fear

“Listen, you emperor-ness,” she spat, “It’s people like _you_ who are the reason that my friend is injured. It might be in your best interests to not talk about the greater good to me!”

Lotor’s jaw clenched. “You would lump me in with the _druids_?!”

Pidge took a step back. “No, I-” She let out a sigh. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. It’s just…”

“It’s just that when you look at me, you see all of your enemies converge behind one face,” he said bluntly, “The face of the Empire.”

Pidge nodded, squeezing her eyes shut. “And I _try_ not to! I really do! But I just- I’ve seen some really awful things, and now…” she gestured helplessly at her unconscious friend. “Now this. Even when we’ve made peace with the Empire, things like this happen.” She opened her eyes, looking Lotor in his yellow ones and hoping that she could make him understand. “I _want_ to like you. You seem like someone that I could get along with, even be friends with. But… it’s just so hard.” She sighed. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. Here, let me see where you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

She smiled slightly. “Lotor, we’re not on a Galra ship right now. I won’t judge you. I won’t think that you’re weak. Victory or death isn’t the Voltron way.”

Lotor hesitated, but she saw a flash of scarlet on his hand, and she seized it. He froze, unsure of what to do with her sudden but gentle contact as she examined the deep cuts that had come from clenching his fists. Pidge smiled slightly to herself again. He was a lot like Keith in some ways.

“It’s _alright_ , Lotor. I _swear_ that I won’t spill this to your commanders.”

She dragged him to the closet of medical supplies and dripped a healing goo on his hand. It shimmered, working both to keep anything from getting into the wound and also to speed up the healing process.

“Why didn’t you use this on Keith?” he asked, examining the silvery salve, “I’m sure that he could use it.”

Pidge shook her head. “Too much blood. It’ll wash the salve out. It’s for minor cuts, not major injuries. Typically, we use the- the pods.”

“Ah.”

Lotor didn’t say anything else, but he peered over her shoulder while she pulled up the scan, enlarging the glowing hologram of Keith’s hands. She tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“I want to make these fingers so that Keith can take them off; I don’t want them grafted to his skin like- like…”

Lotor must have seen the struggle on her face as she thought of Shiro. “Like Sendak?” he finished gently.

“Y-yeah. Like Sendak.” She snorted. “Bastard. I wish his space flight _had_ killed him, the little creep. Right. Well, I don’t want them grafted on his skin, no. But I’m not sure how to do that, _and_ attach them to his nerves. There’s not really a place to put them, seeing as how the druid cut his whole finger off, right at the base, not to mention the nerve damage done by the knife through his hand.”

“What if…” Lotor hesitated. “What if, instead of just making the fingers, you made a glove? It would cover the whole hand, and could connect to the proper places in the wrist, so the damage in his hand wouldn’t matter. But make the nerve connection temporary- perhaps have a detachable nerve that’s in his wrist? That way, he could just take the glove off if it bothered him, but put it on at a moment’s notice.”

Pidge pushed her glasses up her nose thoughtfully, clicking on her laptop to make the necessary changes to her design of the fingers and digitally adding it to the hologram of the hand. “That could work. I didn’t know that you knew technology!”

Lotor’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “I knew that in order to gain the throne, I’d have to make it past many generals with… upgrades. I studied them, and thought on improvements that I would’ve made. Making the cybernetic parts detachable, while it would be a weakness in the way that it would be easier for an enemy to literally disarm you, would also be a strength in the way that it would require less repairs if an enemy _did_ take it off.”

Pidge nodded. “What if… well, Sendak’s arm comes back to him, k’know? What if we could add something like that? I know that Keith isn’t one for tricks and subtlety, but it would be a neat trick if his hand ‘came off’ and he seemed to be disarmed, and then he turned around and slammed their face with a metal fist.”

Lotor nodded. “Sendak’s arm had that glowing purple electricity bind, though, and that may involve grafting.”

Pidge tapped the side of her head. “Not if we added it to that detachable nerve in the wrist! Whatever we do will probably involve some kind of grafting, but doing that one nerve in the wrist is probably easier on Keith than grafting the whole thing. It doesn’t have to be an electricity bind, like Sendak’s. We could put in a strong bioelectric magnet that connects to his nerve and is coded to only attach to the hand, and then we could- wait! That’s it! Bioelectric magnets!”

Lotor caught on fast. “They could take the place of a nerve-”

“-And he could take them off at will,” Pidge finished, “Exactly! They could connect through the skin to the nerve without actually penetrating if we made them strong enough-”

“-And if we code them to respond only to Keith’s brain and nerve patterns-”

“Other people couldn’t control them!” they said in unison.

Pidge grinned, making additional changes to the diagram of the fingers, throwing the detachable nerve in the trash and instead making a line of bioelectric magnets that came up to his wrist. She planned for the strength and then pulled out the medical scan again, scanning Keith’s brain pattern and linking it cybernetically with her hypothetical magnets and then programming them to take the hand apart and re-create it in seconds, packing the whole hand into a small ball that would fit easily in the paladin belt’s pouches, or in Keith’s own fanny pack.

“For easy storing,” she explained to Lotor, who had continued peering over her shoulder, “Just in case. He can turn them on and off at will, and the magnets will drag the hand towards him.”

“How? Did you put a magnet in Keith?”

She shook her head. “No, no, no. You know how we humans have iron in our blood?”

“Yes.”

“And these are bioelectric magnets programmed towards Keith’s bioelectric patterns, so he can sort of make a bioelectric magnet using his brain signals and the iron in his blood. At least, that’s how it works with technical talk; he just has to think it, and the magnets will do the rest.”

Lotor nodded. “I see. That’s quite clever, paladin.”

Pidge grinned, happy at the praise. “It’s pretty great,” she sighed happily, “Now, let’s go visit the castle’s 3D printer!”

“The castle’s-”

Pidge seized Lotor’s arm and yanked him through the hallways until she came to the machine that made their paladin armor when they smashed it or, in Shiro’s case, lost it entirely. Lotor looked at it in awe, and Pidge turned it on.

“Oh, great space 3D printer,” she intoned, holding her laptop up, screen facing the printer, “Please, hear my prayer and grant me what I seek. I entreat you, in the names of the ancient paladins of old, make me these magnets. For the glory of Voltron and the universe!”

The printer started printing, spitting out the magnets that she needed, and she grinned, setting the laptop down. Lotor raised an eyebrow.

“Was the prayer truly necessary?”

Pidge nodded. “Oh, yes. If you fail to recite the necessary rites, the printer refuses to work and occasionally will spit out gunk if it is truly displeased.”

“I was trained to sniff out lies.”

Pidge sighed. “Fine. No, you don’t. You just have to send the printer a scan of what you want. I’ve got Lance believing in the Great Prayer of Printing, and Hunk on the verge of believing it, and I hoped that I could get you too. Come to think of it, I wonder if I could get Keith to believe it…”

Lotor frowned, his brow furrowed in confusion. “But… why?”

“Well- I-” Pidge sputtered, unsure of how to answer this unexpected question. “It’s fun,” she finally spit out, “And it gives me a good laugh when Lance goes praying to the Great Space 3D Printer.”

“I see,” Lotor said, although he clearly still didn’t get it, “But… what is the _point_?!”

Pidge smiled, shaking her head. “It- It raises troop morale,” she told him, “Don’t worry about it, it’s just one of those earth things.”

“Ah- alright then.” Lotor gave a slight shake of his head, as if trying to dislodge the ideas of strange humans.

“Hey, since we’re both up, could you help me redesign the black paladin zipline?”

“What for?”

Pidge blinked at him. “Well- he’ll need to get down to his lion in a wheelchair or something now, won’t he?”

“Will he still be able to fly?”

Pidge shrugged. “I don’t see why not, now that we’ve got the designs of the hands done. He doesn’t need his legs to fly the lion.”

“He doesn’t?”

“Nope. So, I’m thinking that we’ll have to replace the pilot’s chair with a track for a wheelchair, and…” she chattered on, making a 3D design on one of the castles screens. She didn’t notice the brooding look that Lotor gave the medical scan. She didn’t see his glare at the word “paralyzed,” or the sad look that crossed his face when he looked at Keith. It was gone in an instant, and any passersby would wonder if it had truly been there at all.

Xxx

Lance yawned, heading down the castle’s halls towards Kaltenecker’s room. His cow sometimes got antsy and Lance’s pet monitor was going off. A light in the training room made him pause, and he opened the door, confused as to who would be in there.

He saw a flash of white hair, and for a moment thought of Allura, but he quickly saw that the person fighting was Lotor, breathing heavily and fighting a level twenty bot.

“Stupid,” he snarled, bringing his sword in a brutal arc on the bot’s staff, “slow, bad time, can’t fight, not- good- enough!”

On the last word he slipped under the robot’s defenses and destroyed it, smashing it to pieces, still breathing heavily.

“Wow,” Lance said, “Do you think it’s dead?”

Lotor whirled around, pointing the tip of his sword at Lance, a wild look in his yellow eyes. Lance gave an unimpressed look at the sword pointed in-between his eyes and gently put his hand on the flat of the blade, pushing it to the side and walking past the panting Lotor, nudging the remains of the robot with his foot, hands in his pockets.

“Yep,” he told Lotor, “You got it. It’s gone. History. Hey, ‘puter! Clean this mess up!”

The robot disappeared, and Lotor sheathed his sword. “Apologies. I was… on edge.”

“Yeah, I gathered.” Lance took his hands out of his pockets and put one on his hip, the other dangling down by his side. “So, is insulting the robot a new fighting technique, or were you talking to yourself?”

Lotor’s expression turned guarded. “You heard?”

“Mmm. Hate to break it to you, but robots don’t react to insults. Not even level twenty robots have feelings.”

“Ah. Yes. I was working off a bit of stress. I apologize if I disturbed you.”

“Stress, huh? Let’s see… stupid… slow… too slow to save Keith?” There. Lotor’s face remained the same, but his hand tightened on his sword. “Ah. Well, you heard Allura. He’ll live.” Lotor’s expression tightened further. “Hm. You know, then? About…”

“About what?” Lotor’s voice was sharp. He wasn’t going to just tell Lance what he knew.

Lance decided to take a gamble. “Paralysis.”

Lotor nodded. “Allura told you, then?”

“Yeah. He’s… he won’t be able to walk. He can probably still fly his lion, but…”

“It is unlikely that he will be able to fight otherwise,” Lotor finished for him, “Which, as far as I knew, was one of his strong points.”

Lance sighed and looked at the ground. “Yeah. Fighting things… that was what Keith did. That was his area of expertise. The guy was like space Hercules; he fought ninety percent of everything. But now… I don’t know what he’s going to do. Even when he had time off, he was on the training deck. I’m worried that he’s gonna go stir-crazy.”

“Stir-crazy?”

Lance nodded. “Y’know; when you get bored of being in the same spot, doing nothing for a long period of time, and typically being very restless. Stir-crazy.”

Lotor nodded. “Ah. I- I apologize.”

Lance looked up curiously. He’d never heard Lotor stutter before. “What for?”

“If I’d rescued him sooner, then perhaps-”

“Lotor, you rescued him a _week_ after he was kidnapped by _Haggar_! We looked for Shiro for _months_ and we didn’t find him!”

“Still, I feel as though-”

“You’re fine, Lotor.” Lance caught unease and doubt on the emperor’s face. “By the lions, you blame yourself, don’t you?!”

Lotor shifted uncomfortably. “I should’ve been faster or smarter or-”

“Lotor. Really. You did great. There’s nothing else you could’ve done.”

Lotor’s expression darkened in grim joy. “At least I could finally pin something on Haggar to put her on a wanted list. Hopefully we can find her now that the whole empire is on alert.”

“Hopefully. You know, Keith will understand.”

Lotor’s head jerked. “What?”

“He’ll understand that you couldn’t do anything else. He won’t blame you for what happened to you; when he’s thinking clearly, he’s not that kind of guy. And unlike the rest of us, he has no trouble letting go of past animosity. Once he determines that someone’s not an enemy, he lets it go. He moves on to the next enemy, the next problem. He doesn’t see you as an enemy, and he won’t blame you for what happened. So, I guess neither will the rest of us.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Lotor’s face, and he inclined his head slightly. “Thank you, red paladin.” He strode off, his shoulders less tense, like something heavy had been lifted off of them.

Red paladin. The words sounded strange, even after all this time. Lance still wanted to automatically correct them; he wanted to say that he was the blue paladin, not the red. But this was his role, now. And he’d fill it as long as he was needed to.

Xxx

Hunk’s feet tapped nervously through the halls of the Galra high-command. He still wasn’t used to this, and he got the feeling that all of the Galra that he passed could smell the fear on him. It just seemed like the kind of thing that they could do.

A general put one hand out to stop him. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Hunk pushed down a wave of nervousness that swept over him. “Ah- I’m here to see emperor Lotor. I have a message for him from the princess.”

“Yes? And what’s so important about this message that the Altean can’t com him?”

“I don’t question _Princess Allura_ ,” Hunk replied, putting emphasis on Allura’s name and status, “But I assume that it’s a matter of enough importance that she won’t risk it over the coms.”

“Yes? And what’s that?”

“That’s for Emperor Lotor’s ears, not yours.” Hunk tried to imagine that he was brave and strong, as big and intimidating as Shiro, as commanding as Allura, as clever as Pidge or as brave as Keith or Lance. He stood up a bit straighter.

“Yes, well-”

“Yellow paladin!”

Lotor strode down the hallway, and Hunk let out a sigh of relief as the emperor drew closer. He might not be particularly buddy-buddy with Lotor, but he welcomed any distraction from him. The general put a hand to his chest.

“Vrepit sa, sir!”

“At ease, general. What are you doing away from your post?”

“Sir, I came to inquire about the black paladin; neither he nor the black lion has been seen recently, and-”

“As I told you before, general,” Lotor told him, with a touch of impatience and annoyance in his voice, “The black paladin was injured in the witch’s attack on the Castle of Lions.” The lie that they’d formulated beforehand flowed from Lotor’s lips, smooth as honey. “He is recovering, and is unable to fly his lion as of now. However, he will recover soon.”

Another general nearby mumbled about how it wasn’t right for them to care for him like this; either he’d survive on his own, or he wouldn’t. Lotor wheeled on him.

“If _you’d_ like to try your luck at becoming the new black paladin, you may be my guest. It is not so easy to replace a paladin of Voltron as it is a Galra commander.”

His voice was laced with an unspoken threat, and both generals turned and went back to their duties without a word. Lotor, however, turned to Hunk with a tight smile. “Allura commed ahead to tell me that you were coming with a message.”

“Uh- yeah.”

Lotor led him to an empty room, and put his hand on a glowing pad. “Computer, scan for bugs.”

 _No bugs detected_.

“Change the frequency and scan again.”

_Three bugs found and destroyed._

Lotor nodded. “That’s about right. What’s your message, Hunk?”

“Allura just wanted me to tell you that she’s going to take Keith off of the sedative. She wanted you to know.”

Lotor’s gaze hardened. “I’m coming with you.”

Xxx

All of the paladins, plus Coran and Lotor, stood at a respective distance from Keith’s bed as Allura disconnected the sedatives from Keith’s oxygen tube.

“Any minute now,” she told them, “Wait a few ticks. Coran, get those painkillers ready.”

Coran nodded, typing in his request to the computer. Everybody held their breaths, the beeping life-monitoring machines beeping in time to their hearts.

And then, slowly, Keith’s purple eyes opened.


End file.
